The bottom line is clear: Our vital interests in Afghanistan are limited and military victory is not the key to achieving them. On the contrary, waging a lengthy counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan may well do more to aid Taliban recruiting than to dismantle the group, help spread conflict further into Pakistan, unify radical groups that might otherwise be quarreling amongst themselves, threaten the long-term health of the U.S. economy, and prevent the U.S. government from turning its full attention to other pressing problems. -- Afghanistan Study Group

Thursday, December 29, 2016

After a two week lull, Iraqi forces resume the assault on Mosul. Earlier projections that the battle might be over by mid-January have been abandoned. PM Abadi now says three months will be required, but U.S. Lieutenant Gen. Stephen Townsend predicts it will take two years to retake Mosul and Raqqa and "burn out" the remnants of IS. [Of course he doesn't know about Donald Trump's secret plan. -- C]

Saturday, December 24, 2016

As the Iraqi push into Mosul stalls, U.S. forces are "embedding more extensively." U.S. combat brigade commander Col. Brett Sylvia tells Reuters "We are deepening our integration with them. We
are now pushing that into more of the Iraqi formations pushing forward,
some formations that we haven't partnered with in the past where we are
now partnering with them." He refuses to say whether U.S. forces are in Mosul.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

It is now clear that the assault on Mosul has stalled. Prof. Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford discusses the situation. Essentially, IS had two years to prepare during which they dug an elaborate network of tunnels, out of which they emerge to harry Iraqi troops in supposedly secured areas. Casualties to the elite Golden Brigade may also be unsustainable.

Friday, December 16, 2016

[Due to largely static situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I haven't updated this week until now.]

As Iraqi forces capture IS-held territory, the scale of IS weapons production is revealed. "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s weapons production was highly
organized and sophisticated, relying on a “robust and reliable” supply
chain from across the border in Turkey, according to a report by the
London-based Conflict Armament Research group (CAR)." Iraqi forces have captured several sophisticated workshops for the production of mortars, rockets, and car bombs.

A soldier injured in the attack at Bagram on Nov. 12 has died of his injuries. Sgt. First Class Allan E. Brown, 46, of Takoma Park, Maryland,died Dec. 6 at Walter Reed National Medical
Center, Bethesda, Maryland, of injuries sustained from an improvised
explosive device in Bagram, Afghanistan, that occurred on Nov. 12. He was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st
Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division,
Fort Hood, Texas.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Reuters reports that the original plan for the assault on Mosul was to leave an escape route open to the west, so that IS fighters and civilians could flee to Syria. That would allow Iraq to retake the city with fewer casualties. However, Iran persuaded the Iraqis to allow Shiite militia to close the escape route, forcing IS to fight to the death. (Assuming surrender is not in their range of options.) The result is the very hard fight we see now.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Mujib Mashal and Eric Scmitt in the NYT offer a grim overview of the situation in Afghanistan. As readers know, we do not get a reliable daily accounting of casualties among the Afghan security forces, but they report 30 to 50 deaths per day, with the Afghan government controlling only 60% of the country, the Taliban 10%, and 30% contested. Various militants groups other than the Taliban are active in the country. Given the vague and inconsistent pronouncements by the U.S. president elect on Afghanistan, it remains to be seen what the U.S. will do in 2017 but we have to note that the generals he has selected for his national security team, including Secretary of Defense, are likely to be quite hawkish. Stay tuned.

Friday, November 25, 2016

As I suggested recently, the Iraq theater is not separable from Syria and I will have to start paying attention to events there. (The border is artificial anyway.) A member of the U.S. military has been killed by an explosion near Ayn Issa, Syria. No further details as of now. (The town is just north of Raqqa, the IS capital, deep inside Syria, indicating that U.S. forces are deployed within the combat zone.)

I have so far resisted covering incidents outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, simply because mission creep could end up overwhelming me. However, the theater is wider of course, and Syria is an integral part of the same war that is happening in Iraq. U.S. troops are stationed around the regionin support of the effort, including in Jordan. Three American soldiers were killed in Jordan earlier this month. At the time, Jordanian authorities claimed that they had failed to stop at a checkpoint entering the military base where they were stationed. However, it now appears they were murdered. The shooter, a Jordanian soldier, is in a medically induced coma and has not been questioned.

A special report from Reuters says IS leadership in Mosul is succumbing to paranoia which is weakening their effectiveness. (I'm not sure if it's really paranoia, apparently the city really is full of informants who are in contact with coalition forces and has faced one or more coup plots.) They have banned possession of SIM cards and executed dozens of real or suspected spies. Baghdadi is said to be in the city, moving around constantly.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Editor's Note: During the campaign, Donald Trump made vague claims about his likely policy in Iraq and Syria. He claimed repeatedly that the battle for Mosul was a "disaster," and that he has a secret plan to destroy IS. He did talk about "bombing the shit" out of them and propose torturing captives and murdering the families of suspected terrorists. He did condemn U.S. support for opposition forces in Syria and apparently wants to ally with Russia and Russian objectives in the fight against IS in Russia, which would mean restoring the Assad government's rule over the relevant territory. He also at times disparaged the U.S. alliance with the Iraqi government, which he claims is a stooge of Iran. There is no telling what the Trump administration will actually do once he takes office, since he clearly has no idea what he is talking about. In any event, the battle for Mosul is likely to be over or nearly over by then.

Reading through the United States military and court documents outlining
the allegations and evidence against these eight men, one enters a
Kafkaesque world
of strange, vague accusations, rife with hearsay, secret evidence, bad
translations, gross errors of fact and testimony obtained under duress
and torture. . . .

AAN senior analyst, Kate Clark, investigated the Afghan experience in
Guantanamo and found the Afghan case files full of mistakes, bad
translations and fantastical allegations, and evidence made up of
hearsay, double hearsay, unsubstantiated intelligence reports and
testimony from those who were tortured.

Notably, though, this is not the first time that Trump and ISIS have seen eye to eye. Indeed, over the last year in particular, his rhetoric has persistently reflected that of the ISIS propagandists,
especially when it came to issues pertaining to Islam and the West.
It's in this context that the similarities are most striking: when
Trump says "I think Islam hates us," ISIS is there to back him up as evidence, declaring that "we [and the religion of Islam that ISIS falsely claims to represent] hate you." At times, it is almost uncanny how
closely each affirms the other's worldview. However, this is not because
their ideological positions actually resemble each other, and it is
certainly not because an active relationship exists between the two. Not
by any stretch of the imagination could that be the case.

Rather, this strange symbiosis is just indicative of the fact that opposing extremisms sometimes work in each other's favor: the fear that drives Trump's anti-Muslim populism,
in a not-so-roundabout way, fuels the fires of ISIS' global jihadist
project. While their goals are poles apart, each appeals to their
supporters by stoking fears of the "other." So, when ISIS says the West
hates Muslims and Trump says Muslims hate the West, they end up
reinforcing and reaffirming the other's system of beliefs.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

I haven't really bothered to closely follow the day-to-day violence in Afghanistan, which recently has been fairly low-level but continual. But today we have some links that offer overall perspective.

This has been the bloodiest year yet for Afghan security forces, with about 5,500 killed and 9,600 injured. Note that this is one reason why I don't link to every report of fighting, because generally speaking the government does not disclose its own casualties in battles. We see these reports of 9 or 12 or 30 Taliban killed and no mention of government casualties, or a suspiciously lopsided number. The total public reports of specific casualty totals in given engagements are nowhere close to 5,500 dead. This piece also mentions that the government has lost control of territory this year, down to 63% of the country from 65% in May.

Pointing to the threat of Hashd al-Shaabi,
an umbrella group of pro-government Shia militias, Cavusoglu said in
addition to the expected attack on Mosul, the militia is also targeting
largely Sunni areas. Cavusoglu
underlined that Turkey will "take all precautionary measures allowed by
international law" if anything in Tal Afar threatens Turkey’s security. Cavusoglu also warned that Turkey "will not be insensitive" if the Turkmens of Tal Afar are attacked.

This is one of those stories where the focus on a single individual draws attention to a much wider issue which has been ignored. Sharbat Gula, the subject of a famous National Geographic photograph is an Afghan refugee who has been living in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have arrested her for obtaining a fake ID, and she is subject to prison time. (I expect they will just expel her.) Pakistan has been engaged in mass deportation of Afghan refugees, putting great stress on humanitarian agencies.

Turkey insists on joining the offensive over the objections of Baghdad. This is really a question of Iraqi sovereignty in Kurdistan. Despite Ankara's conflict with the PKK and Kurdish parties in Syria, it has reached an accommodation with the Kurdish Regional Government in Irbil and appears ready to support the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan. In return, the KRG has repudiated Kurdish parties that have designs on Turkish territory. Turkey of course wants to have influence in Kurdistan and allying with the peshmerga in the assault on Mosul helps to seal the relationship. Of course if the KRG honored Iraqi sovereignty in its territory, this could not happen.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

IS assault on Kirkuk ends with 48 attackers dead. Fourteen civilians were also killed -- 13 workers at a power plant including 4 Iranians, and one reporter killed by a sniper. Twenty nine members of the Iraqi security forces were also killed. Some of the attackers may still be at large.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the phone from inside
Mosul, Abu Yazan, 36, who didn't want his real name used fearing
reprisals from the group also known as ISIS, said fleeing the city was
"not possible" at this stage. "There is no way out for us as families. Even if we
think about fleeing the city, that is not possible at the time being. We
are being held hostages; ISIL took the whole city of Mosul as hostage,"
said the father of three children.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will face the
daunting challenges of governing a post-ISIL Iraq and post-conflict
security issues: first, the reintegration of territory and populations
that were under ISIL control; second, agreeing to Iraq's internal
borders with the Kurds; and third, presiding over a fragmented,
sectarian state to deal with the aforementioned issues. This is one of the few occasions where I find myself arguing for American interference in domestic Iraqi affairs.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Fifteen years later, we're still fighting in Afghanistan and no one cares:

. . . Today, Oct. 7, marks the 15th anniversary of combat operations in Afghanistan, which is now our longest warto
date, and other than a select few who bear the brunt of this burden,
most people will see #WorldSmileDay trending on Twitter today and not
think twice about this somber and embarrassing anniversary. Nothing
could be more insulting to the troops currently serving.. . .

15 Years Later the Taliban Is Back in Power in Afghanistan, and More Radical Than Ever:

. . . Fifteen years ago, the United States went to war on Afghanistan. . . . A decade and a half later, the Taliban is back in force. It commands
large parts of the countryside, and threatens major urban areas. Kunduz,
in the north, has been going back and forth between the Taliban and the
Afghan National Army. Just this week, the Taliban forces took the
center of the city, only to be ejected a day later. In Helmand Province
in the south, home of the US Surge, the Taliban threatens the provincial
capital of Lashkar Gah. It already holds six of the fourteen districts
of Helmand – Baghran, Dishu, Musa Qala, Nawa, Now Zad and Khanashin).
The rest of the district is almost entirely dominated by the Taliban.
Just north of Helmand, the Taliban threaten the provincial capital of
Uruzgan – Tarin Kot. Much of southern Afghanistan, in other words, is in
the craw of the Taliban.

The invasion
of Afghanistan 15 years ago was an arrogant, wretched adventure that caused a
migrant crisis:

. . Now Isis is in Afghanistan. Car bombs are
as frequent in Kabul as they are in Baghdad, suicide killers as numberless as
they are anonymous. A new president, Ashraf Ghani, an American citizen, has
pledged an end to corruption – some hope – but the militias reign supreme.
(Ghani’s running mate was the ghastly Dustom). His Afghan army and police are
as impotent as they were when first created by yet more American advisers after
2001.

Soldiers turn up for their uniforms
and a month’s pay then vanish into the desert. Khunduz is under Taliban siege
for the fourth time. The Americans bombed an MSF hospital in the last battle
for the city. And the Germans have just announced that they won’t pay more than
the original $5,000 to families who lost their loved ones in a German/Nato air
strike because the pilot followed the rules. Again, the same old story: it’s
not the extent of an Afghan’s loss that will measure his recompense but the
degree of culpability of those who brought about that loss. And we are never –
ever – going to blame ourselves.

. . . Today, 15 years after the invasion began, Afghanistan has turned into
America’s longest war. More than 2,300 American troops have died in the
conflict, which has cost U.S. taxpayers $686 billion. As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed
that we would quickly “finish the job” in Afghanistan. Instead, Obama
has presided over a war that went from dismal to disastrous. According
to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the
Taliban gained ground this year, while the government in Kabul grows weaker. In July, Obama announced that the United States will leave 8,400 troops in Afghanistan—up from the 5,500 he originally called for. By almost any measure, we are moving backwards.. . .